Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @09:06AM
from the time-to-make-a-pan-galactic-gargle-blaster dept.

ananyo writes "It is permanently covered by a massive cap of ice up to 27 metres thick, is six times saltier than normal sea water, and at 13 C is one of the coldest aquatic environments on Earth — yet Lake Vida in Antarctica teems with life. Scientists drilling into the lake have found abundant and diverse bacteria, including at least one new phylum (full paper (PDF)). The find increases the chances that life may exist (or have once existed) on planets such as Mars and moons such as Jupiter's Europa."

For once that Fahrenheit unit is kinda useful, you could at least use it!0F is more or less the coldest temperature you can achieve for a liquid mix of salt and water under standard pressure.So it's entirely possible for a salt lake to have an average temperature of 9F.

Rrrrrrright... Fahrenheit...Why not put it in Rankine, Delisle, Newton, R&#233;aumur and R&#248;mer as well? Only the 'Merkens use Fahrenheit for god knows what reason. Maybe they cling onto it so they keep the brains sharp. Converting 3/7 cubic inch to gallon by head is just difficult... And more useful than sudoku's if I may add.Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_conversion_formulas

Maybe you're not clear on the concept of probability. This is used to reason about things of which we lack certain knowledge.Life on other planets is not dependent on our knowledge, but the probability of life on other planets definitely is.A clue that probability is being referred to is the use of the phrase "increases the chances".

Sometimes smart people can be really stupid. The paradox only exists in not understanding logic. Each link in a logic chain is dependent on the other links. Logic doesn't speak to truth but to relativity. Sometimes people confuse reality (well, actually, their subjective reality) with thought games... usually people who spend all their time in their mind.:)

Logicians and mathematicians all agree that the paradox is true. Observing a non-black non-raven is positive evidence that all ravens are black. The "resolution of the paradox" lies either in arguing that this positive evidence increases the probability of all ravens being black by an extremely tiny amount, or in arguing that we only see the situation as paradoxical because we already know the outcome.

Indeed, one finds the same situation in modern science: the only observed scalar particle is the

A non-black non-raven is proof of absolutely nothing unless you've already established a rule that all ravens are black. It's relative. There is no paradox when you've implicitly created the rules.

They just seem to be baffled by the fact that creating a rule, i.e., creating a description/definition, has implications. The problem with logic is that it works with givens, and in reality there are no givens, we just have workable descriptions. Godel-Escher-Bach, rinse & repeat.

Well, I don't "feel" anything about it. It does seem intriquing... if you like getting lost (or finding the limits) in your own constructs. I wasn't familiar with it before you mentionned it, kind of gave up on math at 13 when I realized 2 important things. One, there are no such things as numbers in reality. Two, therefore all truths, and limitations, which are derivable from math are implicit in the axioms used in constructing the model.

Huh, interesting. Do you even think there are
no "two electrons"? No, since electrons
are fermions, lets say "two cooper pairs".
As to the halting problem: yes, I think "waiting
until everything has interacted with everything"
captures the crux of it. If time and space were
equal, there would be no problem. But in that
case I do not understand how a being would
exist in the first place.

I've given a lot of thought to things like Cooper pairs and Bose-Einstein condensates. It's part of the reason for the system I'm building. Science, unfortunately, doesn't have a revision system. So errors corrected decades later, might only slowly propagate within the field and may not ever make it outside of the field as the fields have narrowed so much. On top of this, data and interpretation of the data are usually intermixed and given equal truth values. So I'm building a system that will cleanl

Well, it depends on what you want to do. At 13 I didn't want to waste my time on a system that could eventually be 'solved' as the consequences of it's axioms were discovered. Infinite monkeys and so on. That isn't a problem to work on, it's like menial labour.

Don't get me wrong, we need the monkeys. I just thought it would be more interesting to work on a unifying theory of science and spirituality, just because people seemed to view, and largely still do, that as ridiculous, impossible, opposites b

There's a difference between not wanting to do math versus denying the basic reality of the number 2. As for "menial labour", that's bullshit. Mathematicians are clever. The naive, bunch of monkeys typing away approach doesn't work very well.

I'm sorry. Please explain the basic reality of the number 2 to me as it seems to be so apparent to you.

Children with meccano can be clever as well, but they're still limited by the building blocks they have at their disposal. Try not to take ridiculous things literally, there are such things as analogies, metaphors, etc...

Please explain the basic reality of the number 2 to me as it seems to be so apparent to you.

I'd like to better understand how you could deny such a basic concept that can be seen everywhere. I have two apples and give one to my friend. I have one apple left to eat. Repeat ad nauseam for just about any item. Numbers are used for counting sheep, money in your bank account, or the number of letters in this sentence. I could go on and on, and I'm sure you don't deny this.

Now you can get into a philosophical debate about what it means to "really" exist, but I find that it's pointless. It's an undeniabl

You asked for my explanation, and I gave you one. As you provide no counter-point, I go back to my original statement: "That sounds like a worthless proposition that seeks to deny everyday reality without any justification."

I'll be nice. Your explanation was already taken care of in my previous posts. If you failed to understand it, there's nothing I can do about that. But perhaps research the difference between descriptive categories and uniqueness. I'm using different words for the same concept, but that probably won't make any difference because people can't see what they don't understand.

That means it is a statistical certainty that there is at least one planet somewhere that has at least one farm animal because:
p = 1 -.5 x.5 x.5....

Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no odds, therefore we can round the average population of the Universe to zero, and so the total population must be zero.

LOLz. This one provoked first the crack of a smile, then a wide grin, and finally a hearty laugh with me. Each phrase, starting with "Well given that..." contains so many crap assumptions - that is exactly what makes it so funny.

Until we actually observe it alien life is in an unfortunate state of both existing and not existing. Showing it is possible for it to exist gives us a reason to look for it which gives us a chance to observe it so it can finally exist for real. Hopefully nobody observes us before we get there or if they do then hopefully they find us actually existing otherwise we will not exist and so we can't actually go observe alien life and it will be stuck both existing and not existing forever. Then again, it may

EDIT: Never mind. I got this confused with Vostok, which actually has been drilled into this year. First reports are that Vostok is devoid of life, but that is only on initial inspection. I thought this article as a correction to that.

Kind of. The presence of life indicates that life is more likely to be present in cold lakes than if there were no life down there. "Chance" was a poor choice of words. "Likelihood" is better. "Chance" indicates that someone rolls the dice when we get there, and the presence or absence of life hangs on the dice roll. And lets not get into macroscopic quantum waveform collapse...:)

Antarctica wasn't always icebound. Once it would have been filled with life until plate tectonics moved it to the south pole. So there is a significant difference to the likes of Mars and moons orbiting the gas giants in that life under the ice first evolved under different conditions somewhere else and has adapted to the changing conditions as the land iced over.

Mars wasn't always a frigid desert. Once it could have been filled with life and liquid water until it drifted further from the sun.

Same goes for moons, but substitute closer to the sun with more geologic activity or greater tidal stresses... either of which could have caused significantly different environments than they have now.

Regardless of the method that caused climate change, the point still stands that Mars could have easily had a very different climate than it does today... so life could have had a similar environmental opportunity on Mars as it had on Earth (although maybe millions of years apart). That life could have then adapted in the same manner as the featured life in Antarctica.

Granted, but the point I was trying to make is that we know there was definitely life on the Antarctic continent before it became glaciated. Regardless of what environmental changes the other places might have gone through over the millennia, we cannot yet be certain that they ever supported life.

Maybe Curiosity will find evidence on Mars but it's going to be a long time until that question can be answered for the gas giant moons.

2800 years doesn't sound like a very long time for this lake to have had it's ice cap. 2800 years ago is still well within the range of human history! It's nothing to geology! So.. how was the lake uncapped 2800 years ago? I know that Antarctica was in a warmer, higher latitude before it moved to the polar region but 2800 years of continental drift should be what, between 100 and 1000 feet? Was there a warming trend back then even bigger than the one today? I wouldn't think there would be all that much evolution even during that short a time so if so the species we know survived it. That revelation sounds like a global warming denier field day! I'm not trying to hand them any arguments, I'm only trying to ask the question. What happened ~2800 years ago?

It just said sealed for 2800 years... nothing about being in a warmer climate then. There's any number of things that could have caused it to be unsealed (which is not the same thing is completely open) up until ~2800 years ago. Maybe there was a subsurface channel connecting it to the ocean, maybe there was a chasm leading from the surface, maybe a meteor strike penetrated the cap.

I've heard of those Antarctic maps but not from a reputable source. Have you?

I've seen them. Nobody disputes their authenticity, only what they represent. I've literally read something along the lines of "the indicated land mass can't be Antarctica because it wasn't spotted until 1815". On Wikipedia or something.

They seems to be largely compiled from Chinese maps. We know for a fact that China had massive seafaring prowess early in the last millenium and gave it up. The critics will say the maps could

Some of the information I've heard indicates this (the Holocene) is probably one of the long (24,000 year) interglacials so it might be another 10,000+ years before the next glacial starts. However, the CO2 we've added to the atmosphere is probably causing enough warming that the next glacial is probably postponed indefinitely.

Actually, there is a good reason why this is news. It means that there is greater variety in life than was expected. And yes, 30 years ago, when I got my degree in microbiology, nobody would have thought that life could exist in 100C+ or in 0C- water. It really is remarkable that we are finding these extremaphiles in these locations.

The find increases the chances that life may exist (or have once existed) on planets such as Mars and moons such as Jupiter's Europa.

Isn't the find kind of irrelevant to the chances that life exists elsewhere? It's like saying that, if I lose two socks and find one 3 years later, then I therefore have an increased chance of finding the second sock sooner rather than later. The first has nothing to do with the second. The existence of life in one place on Earth has little to do with chances of finding life elsewhere, since they're two independent events.

"The find increases the chances that life may exist (or have once existed) on planets such as Mars and moons such as Jupiter's Europa."

Yeah, I wouldn't count on that. Life may be able to adapt to extreme environments, but I have serious doubts about it "spawning" in permanent sub-freezing conditions. Nevermind that we still have no idea whether or not life is unique to Earth. Let's not forget that the Antarctic once straddled the equator, giving life a chance to take hold, then adapt over its slow southward slide to the pole. And what djh2400 said.

Lake Vida, the largest of several unique lakes found in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, contains no oxygen, is acidic, mostly frozen and possesses the highest nitrous oxide levels of any natural water body on Earth.

The abundance of different chemical compounds present in the lake led the researchers to conclude that chemical reactions were taking place between the brine and the underlying iron-rich sediments, producing the nitrous oxide and molecular hydrogen.[...]"It's plausi

"The find increases the chances that life may exist"...
I don't think any find here on Earth can increase chances anywhere else.
The chances of life existing elsewhere is unchanging. Regardless of what humans discover.
I think it just increases the hope of those wishing for the discovery life on other planets.
I personally think it's a false hope, although I'd be excited to be proven wrong.
I also think it's dangerous to rely on a belief in life on other planets, as far as we know life here is rare and uni

There are few new things imagined by anyone. Most stories are rehashes of old stories, often mashups of all stories. How many versions of Romeo and Juliet are there, only with different names, different wordings, different characters' characteristics, time settings, etc?

No, I can remember an episode where SG-1 is trapped (and a little bit brainwashed) to work in a big city underneath a thick layer of ice. Told that they would be the only survivors of an apocalypse on the surface...which was a lie, of course. Star Trek Voyager did a copy of the episode where the crew was working in a big city. Can't find the episode right now, though.

You're both right. There were at least 2 episodes regarding the former site of Atlantis in Antarctica, and there was also the slave labor episode. I could look them up, but they're boxed away at the moment.